Brinker is celebrating one full year of zero failures for its multi-award-winning rigless thru-wellhead workover services that are claimed to be redefining the way operators approach well integrity issues and workovers.
Given that an estimated 20-30% of the world’s wells are shut-in with integrity troubles and many are operating with dispensation, the Aberdeen company has an enormous market opportunity.
Operators unable to bring these wells back online or up to full production without full intervention have traditionally struggled to meet their production quotas.
However, it would appear that Brinker’s innovative Platelet barrier technology – a derivative of the firm’s original pipeline patching system which is applied through the wellhead – really does eliminate the delay, costs, risks and logistical issues associated with a full rig workover.
It seems Platelets can restore full production capacity in a matter of hours by finding and fixing leaks from the wellhead down.
More than 30 workover jobs have been carried out in the last year, from the North Slopes of Alaska to the deserts of the Middle East, all completed with a 100% success rate claimed.
CEO Kevin Stewart said Brinker is, in effect, “completely rewriting the rules” regarding the time it takes to fix and find leaks and previous assumptions about the viability of shut-in wells.
“We are now enabling our customers to implement field-wide integrity programmes by bringing multiple wells back online, in many cases, in just hours, which is unprecedented.
“A recent job saw us find and fix five wells in just four days with zero failure or disruption to the operator’s workflows.”
In this instance, he claimed that, if traditional methods had been used to get the wells fixed, the same work would have taken some 45 weeks to complete.
Stewart: “In the time it would take to plan one rig workover, we can address integrity issues in an entire field. That means rig deployment can be focused on workovers where they are really needed, or for drilling new wells.”
Brinker’s technology enables downhole leaks to be fixed from the top of the wellhead down without removing the wellhead itself, and without the need for a rig or hoist, cased hole logging, workover units, third parties or any complex logistics and planning.
Leaks are found and fixed through the annulus or tubing of a well, enabling operators to bring shut-in wells back online or to full production within hours rather than months.
In Alaska, Brinker’s technology was able to fix a leak from the outer annulus to the conductor of a $20,000-a-day producing well in just six hours by avoiding a costly excavation workover, which would have taken six weeks, and replacing it with the Platelet injection process. HSE risks were also significantly reduced over the traditional workover method.